Outlook 2000 hangs up

[JohnH2101]

I am using Windows XP home edition and Office 2000 premium. Its been working
fine for the past few years. For the last two weeks when I open Outlook it
begins to open and then hangs. I get the not responding message and then end
the task and then send error report. I click on the more info link to MS
website and the error message says "Your computer encountered a problem that
caused MS Office 2000 to crash".... Anyone have any ideas what it could be??

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello]

You may have a corrupted outcmd.dat file. This is the file that stores your
toolbar customizations, and when it becomes corrupted, Outlook can't use it
at startup to build your toolbars, thus causing the hangups. Try renaming or
deleting your outcmd.dat file while Outlook is closed. Renaming it might be
the best idea if you have a lot of customizations that you'd prefer not to
lose; that way if renaming the file doesn't solve your problem, you may be
able to restore it later when you do get Outlook working properly again.
Note that you'll need to search within hidden Windows folders to find the
outcmd.dat file.

 

[K. Orland]

In addition to what Jocelyn advises, also please check the size of your PST.
Since Outlook 2000 is a much older version of Outlook, the PST size limit is
2 GB but it can often encounter size-related problems or even corruption by
about 1.6 GB.

You may have to run scanpst against your PST file while Outlook is closed.
Run the scan repeatedly until no further errors are found.

 

[Kia T]

No idea what it could be, but I'm getting a similar problem. Running XP with 2000 premium and Outlook starts to open, then just shuts down - no hanging, no error message, nothing. I'm wondering if it has something to do with one of the recent automatic updates... but I'm no techie so just guessing based on the fact it was running fine until a couple of weeks ago.